Analyzing Crime Data from Chicago Police Department using Watson Analytics Software

Business Project Management
Name
Federation University- Australia
Professor
Date

Contents
Introduction...............................................................................................................................................3
Task 1- Background information.............................................................................................................3
Task 3 – Advanced Insights......................................................................................................................4
Task 4 – Research......................................................................................................................................4
Task 5 – Recommendations for POLICE CHIEF...................................................................................7
Task 6 – Cover letter...............................................................................................................................10
Task 7 - The Reflection:..........................................................................................................................11
Conclusion................................................................................................................................................12

Introduction
This project is aimed at analyzing crime data from the Chicago Police Department concerning
the reported crimes from the year 2012. This will be accomplished by use of the Watson
Analytics software. The analysis will help to give an informed decisions and lay strategies on
improving the security of the Chicago city.
Task 1- Background information
This project entails use of Watson analytics software to analyze data obtained from the
Chicago police department. The dataset to be analyzed is about the reported crimes in Chicago
from the year 2012. The project aims analyzing the Chicago crime data, present the findings in a
clear manner and then provide an automated predictive analysis by analyzing the data in order to
get an overview of the crimes in Chicago from the year 2012 so as to come up with informed
preventive and corrective measures of curbing crime cases in Chicago so as to increase the safe
city index of the City.
The dataset given entails different aspects of crime cases in Chicago city reported to the
Chicago Police Department beginning from the year 2012. The data describes different aspects
of the crimes such as the day and time a crime was committed, the area where the crime was
committed, the type of crime committed, the number of cases cleared in comparison with the
number of reporting made among others. This details will greatly inform the Chicago Police
Departments in laying strategies in an endeavor of reducing crime rate of Chicago.
The use of the Watson Analytics Software in the data analysis is a very good choice it is
able to analyze big chunks of data in a user friendly manner as it uses simple language
understandable by the user (Watson, 2014) It also presents it in an easily understandable manner

by use of inforgraphics (Hoyt, 2014), that is in form of graphs and charts and hence ease the data
interpretation and decision making process. The size and the nature of data is also not a problem
once this software is used because it is able to analyze unformatted data very quickly by use of
an isolation button (Epstein, 2012). The software data storage system is also cloud based making
it able to store large amounts of data without a limitation of space (Kambatla, 2014).
Task 3 – Advanced Insights
 Due to the high number of crimes in Chicago, its safe city index is quite low (Mori,
2015).
 The crime clearance ratio in Chicago is quite low. These means that the number of
arrests and prosecutions done for crime perpetrators is very minimal compared to the
crimes reported (Roberts, 2008).
 Theft crime has the least crime clearance ratio while narcotics related crimes has the
highest crime clearance ratio. This means that the number of theft crime perpetrator
arrested and prosecuted is low as compared to that of narcotic crime perpetrators.
 The residential areas and the streets in Chicago has high prevalence of crimes. This
means that these areas are the crime hot spots in Chicago.
 Reduction of crime numbers reported in Chicago from the year 2012 0onwards shows
that much has been done in cubing the crimes by the Chicago Police Department
(Ratcliffe, 2011).
Task 4 – Research
The Business Intelligent (BI) solutions/dashboards, and in this case the Watson Analytics
Software, has been chosen because of the following reasons.